For the 12th consecutive year, The Cardinal Nation rolls out its choices for the top players at each level of the St. Louis Cardinals system from the summer, following season recaps by affiliate. The series runs each day from September 11 through the month of October.

I can’t wait for the recaps and the choices to begin. Now that MEM will not proceed into the PCL Championship series unless they can win the next two in Colorado Springs, it will make my daily baseball fix more exciting.

The St. Louis Cardinals short-season Class-A affiliate finished five games over .500, but fell just short of a playoff berth. Key standouts included Joshua Lopez, Evan Mendoza, Scott Hurst, Andrew Summerville, Daniel Castano and Levi MaVorhis.

The Peoria Chiefs earned a Class-A Midwest League playoff berth for the third consecutive season, but again dropped their first round matchup. Leadership from Stefan Trosclair and Brian O’Keefe was crucial in their second-half surge.

The Double-A Cardinals fell just short of a third straight Texas League playoff berth, but played well and contributed several major leaguers, including Jack Flaherty and Magneuris Sierra, with many more on the way.

Actually Knizner was sent to SPRF on June 14th as a replacement for Lino who was DLed the same day. After JCruz was released in April, Jenner was sent there as the backup.
SPRF was looking foe an everyday C. JeMartinez was at PB and was struggling. Knizner, who played at Johnson City last season, was hitting pretty well for Peoria 179AB- .279BA- .325 OBP. He really stepped it up and made the best of his opportunity at…………. SPFD 182AB- .324BA- .371 OBP.

A prospect who can go from a R league level to a starting position at AA and improve on his numbers all in one year is one you certainly keep your eye on. We’ll see where he slots in our prospect list. BW had him at #19 on his Aug. list.

ps JeMartinez was sent up to MEM for their post-season run and has been hitting rather well enough. The C position is getting crowded with some damn fine prospects.

Knizner also had hitting streaks going at both Peoria and Springfield; however, I don’t remember specifics. At Springfield he he had a slow start in June, but he caught fire and was batting at something like .425 with 20+ multiple hit games for the month of July. Martinez was promoted to Springfield just before the Springfield season’s end. He played one game there before he was sent to Memphis because Jenner unexpectedly went on the DL ; the Springfield team was in the midst the battle for a playoff spot, and with Knizner being so reliable, he was most likely kept at Springfield as the best option to assist in the playoff battle. Surprised that Martinez was the choice to fill in for Jenner at Memphis, but can see why Knizner was kept in place at double A. When comparing the stats of the two, Knizner definitely had a better season. Glad to see Martinez is stepping up and showing some progress after a fairly stagnant Palm Beach run.
PS… Knizner’s offensive stats were on par with other players with longer time at the double A level. Splitting seasons between Peoria and Springfield kept him out of the running for any league recognition.

Since individual award writeups are for members, I am not posting each link here. However, we are having daily announcements, currently in the Reliever of the Year category. As a reminder, here is the page where everyone can follow the winners as they are announced.